this post was submitted on 19 Nov 2023
81 points (90.1% liked)

Android

17483 readers
213 users here now

The new home of /r/Android on Lemmy and the Fediverse!

Android news, reviews, tips, and discussions about rooting, tutorials, and apps.

🔗Universal Link: [email protected]


💡Content Philosophy:

Content which benefits the community (news, rumours, and discussions) is generally allowed and is valued over content which benefits only the individual (technical questions, help buying/selling, rants, self-promotion, etc.) which will be removed if it's in violation of the rules.


Support, technical, or app related questions belong in: [email protected]

For fresh communities, lemmy apps, and instance updates: [email protected]

💬Matrix Chat

💬Telegram channels / chats

📰Our communities below


Rules

  1. Stay on topic: All posts should be related to the Android OS or ecosystem.

  2. No support questions, recommendation requests, rants, or bug reports: Posts must benefit the community rather than the individual. Please post to [email protected].

  3. Describe images/videos, no memes: Please include a text description when sharing images or videos. Post memes to [email protected].

  4. No self-promotion spam: Active community members can post their apps if they answer any questions in the comments. Please do not post links to your own website, YouTube, blog content, or communities.

  5. No reposts or rehosted content: Share only the original source of an article, unless it's not available in English or requires logging in (like Twitter). Avoid reposting the same topic from other sources.

  6. No editorializing titles: You can add the author or website's name if helpful, but keep article titles unchanged.

  7. No piracy or unverified APKs: Do not share links or direct people to pirated content or unverified APKs, which may contain malicious code.

  8. No unauthorized polls, bots, or giveaways: Do not create polls, use bots, or organize giveaways without first contacting mods for approval.

  9. No offensive or low-effort content: Don't post offensive or unhelpful content. Keep it civil and friendly!

  10. No affiliate links: Posting affiliate links is not allowed.

Quick Links

Our Communities

Lemmy App List

Chat and More


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] rustyredox 8 points 10 months ago

It feels like we're finally, and thankfully, coming full circle. I remember buying my first digital camera in the early 2000s, specifically chosen because it was one of the many that included USB web camera functionality. Aside from downloading the photos on its internal storage, external storage was optional, you could also use the included software to serve as a webcam source.

I can't remember if it included a microphone, I'm thinking it didn't. It also ran off on those small stubby film camera batteries, and not off USB power from the cable you connected it to, which was kind of dumb, and made it expensive to use as a webcam. The video quality must have been something around 140p, and any kind of conference call software was garbage back then as well. Yet the premise of a single device having multi-use features was such a no-brainer, given you already had have the PC USB integration to use it as a point and shoot digital camera.

Modern smart phones have such excellent cameras, it felt really odd that you had to use a lot of hacky work arounds and reencoding over network streams to emulate the same functionality that some of the first affordable digital cameras on the market had decades prior. I spend some time looking into weather a custom Linux kernel could be used with Android to emulate the standard USB profile of a UVC camera device, but it's really nice to hear that this kind of functionality is being pushed through Android mainstream development.

https://github.com/tejado/android-usb-gadget

Guess it only took a pandemic and Apple to showcase the same functionality to spur the core Android development into gear to match feature parity.